1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to beverage dispensing and in particular to a postmix juice dispensing system for dispensing a finished beverage from a pliable concentrate at or near freezer temperatures with no or minimal conditioning.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Postmix juice dispensing systems are known. Orange juice concentrate, for example, is distributed frozen. Restaurants remove concentrate from the freezer and thaw the concentrate in a cooler prior to dispensing. The restaurant personnel has to estimate its juice requirements at least two days in advance and place sufficient concentrate in its cooler. If the restaurant's estimates are incorrect or if someone forgets, the restaurant will run out of thawed concentrate. Also, there is often a limited amount of cooler space available for thawing orange juice concentrate. When a restaurant runs out of thawed concentrate, juice can no longer be sold or else measures are sometimes taken to quickly thaw frozen concentrate and such measures often are inefficient and ineffective and also sometimes affect the taste of the resulting product. Orange juice concentrate has typically been 3+1 concentrate (meaning that it is to be mixed 1 part concentrate to 3 parts of water to be reconstituted), which has an ice point of about 17.degree. F. At freezer temperatures (about -25.degree. F. to 10.degree. F.) this product is not pliable and will not flow.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a postmix juice dispensing system for dispensing with concentrate at or near freezer temperatures with little or no conditioning.
It is another object of this invention to provide a postmix beverage dispensing package for frozen concentrate.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a one-piece, integral concentrate-pump package that includes both a concentrate container and a positive displacement metering pump.